Thursday, January 17, 2013

A bravery fiercer than death: The 35 heroes of Gush Etzion

For those of you who are not familiar with the story of the Gush Etzion 35, this will be especially enlightening. Gush Etzion, which is in Judea, was purchased by Jews and five towns were set up there between 1943-47. When the War of Independence started they came under attack. 65 years ago this week, 35 Haganah troops trying to resupply the towns were murdered because they allowed two Arab women gathering wood (I had previously heard an elderly Arab shepherd, but the video talks about two young Arab women) to live.

Here's the story of the 35. Let's go to the videotape. More after the video.

Someone with whom I used to work was one of the defenders left in Gush Etzion when it fell; we have not been in touch in many years. He was a Leftist when I knew him (he and his wife were members of Peace Now). He told me that the surviving defenders were taken prisoner by the Jordanian legion and taken to a prison camp in Jordan. The only reason they were not massacred was that the British were watching over the legion and would not allow them to massacre the Jewish prisoners. Many of the prisoners were civilians - the Jordanians took all the males (over age 16 if I recall correctly), but the British made the Jordanians let the women and children go, as was the case in Jerusalem. Eventually, the Jews were the subject of a prisoner exchange.

In case you missed what the video was hinting at when they talked about body parts from the 13:00 mark, the Arabs mutilated the bodies, as is their wont, and they had to do a Goral HaGra in order to bury some of them:

"One dramatic instance of the use of the Gra Goral was in the
identification of the bodies of 12 members of the Lamed Heh (the Convoy
of 35, with the Hebrew letters lamed and heh being equivalent to the
numbers 30 and 5, respectively ). The 35 fighters, members of the
Haganah pre-state militia, were killed in January 1948, during the War
of Independence, at the foot of the Arab village of Tzurif, during their
attempt to reach the Etzion Bloc of Jewish settlements, south of
Jerusalem. The bodies of the fighters were mutilated by the Arab
attackers who killed them, and only in 1951 were the corpses gathered.
By that time, it was possible to identify only 23 of the bodies
conclusively.

The chief rabbi of Jerusalem at the time, Tzvi Pesach Frank, ruled
that the identification of the remaining bodies would be determined by
the Gra lottery, and the task was assigned to the revered Jerusalem sage
Rabbi Aryeh Levin.

The identification took place in Levin's beit midrash, in the
presence of representatives of the bereaved parents. Twelve candles were
lit, the Bible was opened at random seven times and Rabbi Levin ruled
that as they stood in front of the remains of each of the fallen
fighters, the last verse on the page had to include the name, or an
allusion to the name, of each of those whom they were trying to
identify. "How amazed everyone was when one of the verses that first
appeared was 'The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the
world, and they that dwell therein,' a verse that [in Hebrew] begins
with the word 'to the Lord,'" which is abbreviated in Hebrew with the
initials lamed-heh. "Moreover, to everyone's amazement, every page spoke
unequivocally. In the first verse they reached there was a specific
name that clearly identified one of the fallen ... One after the other
... the identity of the fallen was determined." (Quoted in "A Tzaddik in
Our Time: The Life of Rabbi Aryeh Levin," by Simcha Raz, who also
provides the official minutes of the lottery. ) While a lottery was
often used for private matters, here the lottery was conducted for the
purpose of a decision of great public significance."

Links to this post:

About Me

I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 12 to 33 years and eight grandchildren. Three of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com